ABSTRACT
As we write this, the Nordic-Baltic region is again back in the headline news. With climate change opening up the waters in the High North, intensified great power interest in developments in the Arctic, and a Russian gas pipeline crossing the Baltic Sea, along with a build-up of the Russian naval capacity, it is obvious that the region has regained a significant geopolitical position. As seminars are arranged and new reports filed on an almost weekly basis about events in the Arctic, it is easy to forget that the interest from the outside world in the Nordic-Baltic region was not always this intense; quite the opposite.
